Capn, theres a whirlpool ahead

Marie Colvin turned sailor as a break from war reporting, but the high seas proved just as life threatening

When the 13-tonne racing yacht I was crewing started spinning backwards faster than we had been sailing forwards, I knew this was not going to be an average regatta. We were in the grip of a whirlpool.

It was nearing midnight and we were 150 miles into the Rolex Middle Sea Race, in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the boot of Italy. I had stayed awake after my watch to see the waters that Homer had described as the graveyard of boats.

I thought it was just a Greek myth that immortalised this place as home to Scylla, the six-headed monster who devoured sailors, and Charybdis, the original bad girl whom Zeus struck with a lightning bolt that changed her into a ship-swallowing vortex. Though I’d grown up sailing, earning my skipper’s certificate in Southampton, I’d never seen indications for whirlpools on any chart. That changed dramatically in